I believe that every person is trying to make his world better.

We all have problems and want to eliminate our problems and make our world a better place. How we, as individuals, set about to improve our personal situation is dependent upon many things coming together in ourselves. Our genetic heritage and our parents have a great impact upon who we are, and who our friends are when we are growing up and who we presently choose to associate with also affect us greatly and help us decide what is best for us and what we should do to improve our life situation.

Today, I had a conversation with a friend who told me of another of his friends who was very happy about the coming war between Israel and Iran. This person, unknown to me, wanted that war to happen because it meant that Judgement Day was soon to be upon us and therefore he would soon be ascending into perpetual and permanent Heaven. His reasoning was that that exact war was foretold in the Bible as the precursor event to Judgement Day, and that when it occurred those people who believed in that event would go to heaven. Since he believed in those interpretations of the scripture he believed he was certain to be chosen and therefore his problems on this earthly hell were soon to be over. From his point of view it all makes perfect sense and that was why he was so happy.

I have other examples but that one will suffice for my point, that every person is trying to make his world better. It is a question of how they choose to do that and what are their reasons for believing some particular actions will succeed in improving their world. Destroying the world seems the most extreme way of improving the situation, because it is based on an untestable assumption, and if that assumption proves to be wrong then great suffering will have occurred unnecessarily. It seems the person holding that view doesn’t have any feeling for the seven billion people who would be injured by his untested assumption coming into historical fact. Also, there is the assumption that he has his belief in precise alignment with the requirements posited in the scriptures. The old Sagan saw, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” seems to be called for, because in this case there are already two claims which are very extraordinary claims and no testable evidence of validity of either until after the horrific Judgement Day events.

This may be reasonable to that particular person, but I want to live in a more predictable world where there is a closer connection between cause and effect. A world where people are rewarded for helping other people live better lives. However, I still do believe that he is trying to make his world into a better place.